Feral Pigs Have Overrun Texas. Now They're Coming for You.

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TEXAS - A few years ago, when it became clear the pigs were going to be a real problem, I went on a daylong caper with a couple of young hunters named Clint Watson and Dusty Kennedy. We met out near Big Thicket. Starting around 3 a.m., we ran after a pack of bay dogs for fourteen hours before a pup called Nub finally backed a wild sow up against a stump. All that to capture one pig.

Now multiply that day of hopeless futility across the whole state. By the estimation of the Department of Agriculture there are now 2.5 million feral pigs in Texas. Scientists at Texas A&M University have mapped their expansion across 134 million acres, or 79 percent of the state. The pig population is growing at between 18 and 21 percent per year, dwarfing Texas's nation-leading (human) population growth rate of 2.1 percent. If things continued at that pace (and they likely won't, but still), by 2027 there will be more feral pigs than people.

And these pigs can hardly even be called pigs. Pigs are adorable, relatively speaking. Pigs are Wilbur and Babe and Piglet and Miss Piggy and the one who went to market and the one who built his house of straw. We are talking now of Sus scrofa, the feral crossbreeds descended from hogs set loose by Spanish settlers in their hasty exodus during the war for independence and wild boars set loose by twentieth century hunters for reasons I do not fully understand. These are muscular creatures, razor-backed and tusked, with grizzled hair and long straight tails. They stand three feet high and weigh at least a hundred pounds, often much more. It is said they can't see too well, but they have a keen sense of smell, very little fear, a skill for slipping traps and an uncanny knack for leading hounds to the water to drown.

The hogs cause more than a billion dollars a year in property damage, by the estimate of the federal Department of Agriculture. They spread pseudorabies and fleas and ticks and swine brucellosis and trichinosis and tuberculosis and kidney worms and bubonic plague. They eat whatever, including their own young, which is probably a blessing because they produce four or more every year.

For decades, Texas has been on the front lines of the resistance. And we are getting routed. Fences and traps and dogs and guns have proven more or less equally useless. In recent years, the state has made it okay to shoot wild hogs from the air. For $1,600, Blue Collar Boys Outfitting will take you, an AR-15 and a stockpile of ammunition up to blast away for two hours. Cedar Ridge Aviation of Knox City reports a kill count of 7,000 over the past three years. Heli Hunter of Ennis claims to have shot 254 in a single three-hour flight.

But while fun has surely been had, the population growth continues to outpace any efforts to beat them back. And the hogs, once concentrated in rural areas, are drawing nearer to the city centers. Last year, when a new highway opened on the outskirts of Austin and San Antonio, drivers started smashing into them at 85 miles an hour. A few weeks ago, when the state announced the results of an eradication grant program, the list of participating counties included Collin. That's the suburbs north of Dallas. Dr Pepper Snapple Group has its headquarters up there. Ray Nagin lives up there. The Black Heff hangs out up there. We've got a MLS franchise up there for crying out loud.

Laugh all you want, but these creatures are no longer just our problem. They are coming for you too. Already they number five million across 35 states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. "As feral hog popu­lations continue to expand across the United States," says a recent report by a researcher for the US Department of Agriculture, "wildlife biologists, state agriculture agencies, and policy makers from other states where feral hog damage is an emerging problem are looking to Texas."

Well, look away. So far we've mainly come up with the helicopter thing. That and a field trial of a sodium nitrate poison called "Hog-Gone." But mainly the helicopter thing.

Here in Texas, it's true, we have a bit of a stubborn streak. It took a thirteen-day siege of the Alamo to persuade Lt. Col. William B. Travis to ask his fellow citizens and compatriots "in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch." But here I am saying it: My fellow citizens and compatriots: We're going to need help with the pigs. With all dispatch.